As my Nikon D80 makes it quite easy to take several hundred photos per session, and converting from the RAW format to psd takes forever (per photo) I recently created a couple of new photoshop actions to speed conversion and color correction.

They are both part of an action set I call “Mass Photo Actions”; you can download it here.

There are two actions in there that serve different purposes. The first action “RawToPSDNoTweaks” just takes a RAW file from a particular directory, converts it using the default settings, saves it as a psd file, and then closes it. It does no color correction, use this one if you intend to make a lot of manual color corrections later.

The second one “RawToPSDWithTweaks” opens and converts the file like the one above, and then does a safe amount of color correction and image sharpening to the image, saves it as a psd and then closes the file. Use this one if you took a bunch of well-exposed photos and just want to do some small automated tweaks.

None of these functions are that notable in and of themselves, but when run in a batch on hundreds of files they save hours of time.

To use it, first download the action, put it somewhere on your hard drive, bring it into PhotoShop using the “Load Actions” option on your Actions toolbar. Now it’s ready to be used on an individual file.

To run it in a batch, just go to File > Automate > Batch – and then choose the proper photoshop action and the source and destination directories.

No warranty is expressed or implied, you do this at your own risk. I’ve only tested this on PhotoShop CS Two on Windows Vista. Use at your own risk.

I just felt like sharing. These two actions save me hours of time after every photo adventure.

At long last, after much color correcting and tweaking in Photoshop, my last round of photography is online. I’ve put some samples on this page, just click any of them and it will take you to the gallery. Or you can just click here.

The lovely Michelle Overstreet was my model for the occasion. Her brother Scott (the only other person in any of the photos) was there as well taking pictures.

As you might notice the choice to go for color over black and white depends greatly on the total light available as well as the amount of concrete in the shot.

On the whole I think they turned out quite well. I was able to do some tricks with lighting I haven’t tried before, and the fiddler against the city skyline remains a solid idea. I particularly like the use of the Flash (on the later shots) and the cool golden glow the lighter provided. In post processing I created several utility Photoshop Actions (I’ll post those later) which sped up the color corrections and image resizing a great deal.

All of these were taken last Saturday on either Bishop Street in Midtown (near Atlantic Station, or at the North Highland bridge downtown. For my non-local readers, these locations are about five miles apart from each other in Atlanta. We started about 7:00 PM and went to 9:45. With the exception of the black and white conversion, cropping and color corrections, almost nothing was done in Photoshop.

The federal government is like a fence around a farm. The fence raises no crops of wheat and no fields of corn. It only protects the farmer while he raises his crops, he giving a good portion of his time to keep the fence in repair. Just so we give a good share of our taxes to keep the great government fence in repair. I beg of you to keep this thought in mind that government has not a dollar to give any manÂ not a bed, not a cow or calf. Nothing but protection while you are at work for yourself. Government has nothing to give anybody.